The Road More Traveled: Why the Congestion Crisis Matters More Than You Think, and What We Can Do About It [Hardcover]

Sam Staley (Author), Ted Balaker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 27, 2006

Though often dismissed as a minor if irritating nuisance, congestion's insidious effects constrain our personal and professional lives, making it harder to find a good job, spend time with our family, and maintain profitable businesses. After centuries of building our cities into bustling centers of commerce and culture, we are beginning to slow down. The Road More Traveled shines a new light on the problem of traffic congestion in this easily accessible book. You'll learn how we can reclaim our mobility if we are willing to follow successful examples from overseas, where innovations in infrastructure and privatization have made other nations stronger and more competitive. By thoroughly debunking the myths that keep our policy makers trapped in traffic, the book argues that we can and should build our way out of congestion and into a fast-paced future.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This book adds three unusual assets to the congestion debate--it's bright and readable, chock-full of facts, and provides real world solutions. The Road More Traveled should be required reading not only for planners and their students, but for anyone who loves cities and wants them to thrive as real places, not merely as museums, in the 21st century. (Joel Kotkin )

The Road More Traveled is a well-written, logical, and practical approach to congestion mitigation in America. I strongly encourage that it be read by every public policy maker who is struggling for real solutions to the traffic congestion crisis facing our nation. It dispels long-standing myths, replaces them with factual data, and offers results-based solutions. (S. David Doss )

The Road More Traveled provides a thoughtful analysis on the causes of congestion and offers detailed suggestions for relieving it in America's cities. Balaker and Staley clearly debunk the myth that there is nothing we can do about congestion. (Mary E. Peters )

The Road More Traveled clearly outlines the transportation infrastructure problems facing our country and examines several innovative funding solutions. This book will change the way Americans view our highways and interstates and show them how we can build better roads at less expense for the next generation. (Senator Jim DeMint )

The Road More Traveled is an important wake-up call to us all, but especially to policy makers and transportation officials. Balaker and Staley convincingly show how costly traffic conjestion is. But more importantly they demonstrate that the defeatists who claim that we should just learn to live with gridlock are wrong. The book lays out a road map for restoring our lost mobility. One can only hope that policy makers, government officials, community leaders, and the media read this book. (Robert D. Atkinson )

Many people complain about highway traffic and many policy makers respond with plans for more transit and more HOV lanes. To help us all get past the quackery, Balaker and Staley argue persuasively for policies that might actually work. Buy their book, read it, and then send it on to your favorite political representative. (Peter Gordon )

About the Author

Ted Balaker is the Jacobs Fellow and editor of Privatization Watch at the Reason Foundation. Balaker spent five years with ABC Network News producing pieces on a wide array of issues, including privatization, government reform, regulation, addiction, the environment, and transportation policy. Sam Staley is director of urban and land use policy at the Reason Foundation. He is also senior fellow at both the Indiana Policy Review Foundation and the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions. Staley has more than 25 years of experience working in urban policy and has written more than 80 professional articles and reports and his commentary has been nationally syndicated. He is the author of Drug Policy and the Decline of American Cities (1992) and Planning Rules and Urban Economic Performance: The Case of Hong Kong (1994), and co-editor of Smarter Growth: Market-Based Strategies for Land Use Planning in the 21st Century (2001).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (September 27, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0742551121
• ISBN-13: 978-0742551121
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,807,035 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Policy Makers Need to Read this book - the public wants roads, January 29, 2007

By 

Rob Shearer (Mt. Juliet, TN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Road More Traveled: Why the Congestion Crisis Matters More Than You Think, and What We Can Do About It (Hardcover)

This is an important book for planners, planning commission members, staff and elected officials to read -- especially for anyone involved in the policy-making, planning or approval side of the road construction business. It offers a general apologetic for the value of mobility, independence and flexibility. It argues eloquently that congestion is an evil to be avoided.

Its two hardest-hitting chapters are an eloquent defense of suburbia (debunking ten myths) and an exposé on the "congestion coalition" which has perversely encouraged and acquiesced in congestion in the misguided belief that "it's good for us." The chapter on the "congestion coalition" has some interesting analysis on that ubiquitous planning agency known as an "MPO."

But by far the most valuable section of the book is its four chapters of real-world examples and practical suggestions. The authors draw our attention to the innovative ways in which massive public projects are being planned and financed overseas, with some suggestions on how those techniques might be used in the US. There is a fascinating chapter on how Houston "built its way out of congestion." -- and an equally fascinating chapter on the success of variable tolling on the 91 Express Lanes in Orange County, California. Chapter 10 offers a variety of practical suggestions on how to tame congestion. Suggestion one: "Build sufficient road capacity to handle the growth in travel demand."

The last chapter is a clarion call to action. It lays out Ten Steps to Congestion Relief beginning with "Admit that Mobility is good" and ending with a challenge to "Take the Long View."

The notion that we cannot build our way out of congestion is wrong. It's wrong historically, and it's wrong technically. Projects in the United States and around the world show us over and over again that we have the engineering capabilities to build new capacity and manage existing networks more effectively.
Congestion has risen to stifling levels because we have failed locally and nationally to make mobility a public-sector priority. It's time to reestablish mobility as a priority for transportation policy at the national, state, and local levels. Moreover, it's important to realize that zero gridlock is a viable goal for regional transportation planning. We have the tools. Public opinion supports it. The funding is there to put meaningful strategies in motion and implement real solutions. What we lack is the leadership to make it happen.
"America never has permanent shortages," frustrated Texas legislator Mike Krusee observes, "except in one thing: transportation. Many Americans think congestion is inevitable; it is not. It is a breadline, it is un-American, and we should not tolerate it."
It's time now to put the right strategies in place to improve mobility for everyone and eliminate congestion in America's cities. (page 177)

Without endorsing every suggestion made by the authors, I nonetheless encourage as many as possible to read and reflect on the important ideas in this book.

Robert G. Shearer
City Manager, City of Mt. Juliet
Christmas, 2006

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clear-Headed Insight into a Crucial Issue, February 4, 2007

By 

Eric Wigginton (Jersey City, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Road More Traveled: Why the Congestion Crisis Matters More Than You Think, and What We Can Do About It (Hardcover)

If this book were nearly unreadable and merely served to make its point in dense prose, it would be well worth its price and then some for making a common sense point that has been given short shrift in planning debates. Luckily for us, however, the authors have produced an emminiently accessible work that allows any reasonably literate person with or without a degree in urban planning to have a better understanding of how mobility profoundly affects all of our lives and how our mobility has become constrained over the past few decades by a combination of well-intentioned but poor urban planning and outright congestion-by-design.

The authors key point is a simple one: mobility matters. It matters economically and it matters socially. The ability of citizens of modest means to travel expeditiously and cheaply opens up to those citizens a wider range of job opportunities and social interactions than would otherwise be available. Mobility makes our economy richer and social lives more fulfilling. Part of the promise of a free society can only be obtained if we are free to navigate the physical landscape on which that society exists. Your ability to travel 10 miles or 25 miles or 50 miles to commute, to shop to visit friends and relatives, makes your life richer than it would be if your freedom of movement were limited to narrow corridors or tight spheres.

A couple of examples: the authors point to dating patterns in a large metropolitan area which have been limited to realtively tight geographic areas due to the hassle that navigating traffic congestion poses to the process of looking for mates further afield. Simply put: A person won't seek to date whom he or she cannot easily reach. This point is further brought home in the case of two income-earner households who have to balance career choices with the demands of conflicting commutes. Ideally, both spouses/partners would take the job that provides him/her with the greatest individual benefits, allowing both to achieve maximum income and job satisfaction. Where mobility constraints require a person to design a career around a commuting pattern it becomes very difficult for both spouses/partners to maximize career opportunities.

The authors make an important and common sense point that is nontheless viewed as controversial in our day and age. To wit: no device enhances personal mobility more than an automobile. For some reason I cannot understand, the automobile has come to be viewed as an evil to be tolerated and not as a tool that has enabled the widest possible share of the population to take full advantage of the range of economic and social opportunities open to those who can physically access them. Instead planners and activists have foisted on the general populace the notion that we are "addicted" to the automobile and must be incentivized or coerced into living in extreme density and travelling on fixed rail. The most powerful cudgel these elements have to force the general population to throw up its hands and give in is to freeze roadway expansion, force us to choke on our own desire for transportation and accept a prescription of fixed rail transit.

The authors persuasively take on the most pervasive arguments of this congestion lobby. I won't repeat all of their take downs here. My favorite is their evisceration of oft-repeated (and never examined) notion that (let's all say it together) "we cannot build our way out of congestion." Uh, yes we can, and the notion that it is somehow per se impractical or "wrong" to add capacity to a system functioning at or above capacity would never be applied if the system at issue were a school system, healthcare system or mass transit system.

Every public official who is charged with transportation planning, and every citizen who is interested in the subject of mobility should read this book.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Common Sense comes to solving traffic congestion!, August 3, 2007

By 

William Richardson "NO RTA$ Man" (Madison, WI.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Road More Traveled: Why the Congestion Crisis Matters More Than You Think, and What We Can Do About It (Hardcover)

This book could save us a Billion dollars! (Or more)

First, I must give you some background on why I was frantically looking for a well written, fact packed book on the cost benefits of rail vs. highways and which one makes the most sense in terms of cost, convenience, efficiency, safety and actual usage.

In Madison, Wisconsin our "Mayor Dave" and our Dane County Executive recently "announced an agreement" at a press conference in June 07. The announcement was the two of them had decided for a county of 450,000 people to go ahead with plans for a commuter rail plan for Madison and two closeby towns AND a Trolley system for downtown Madison only.

The Commuter rail system is to use the surface rail tracks (not subway or elevated) laid down in the post Civil War era when there were no autos, trucks, and busses and few roads! Ignoring this fact and even admitting in the Transport 2020 report that a rail system would "likely increase traffic congestion" they decided they wanted a Train and a Trolley too!

The cost?

Estimates for the build-out are around a billion dollars. Who pays? You know...Taxpayers at all levels. Locally another 1/2 per cent added to our 5.5% sales taxes- already above the rest of the state - to raise $46 Million a year forever to subsidize the rail system.

Moreover, like the movie "Dumb and Dumber" my Mayor Dave made a second choice. How about another $250,000 (start up costs only) for his favorite toy - a couple of miles of Trolley system that he knew the County taxpayers would be happy to support. (Even though they would likely never use it)

Note: The Mayor and the County Executive are nice people and they are not dumb, but the rail and trolley plans being proposed certainly are!

Now you know why I bought this book! The authors are experts. Their writing is clear, concise and reads like Ben Franklin's Almanacs. Common sense rules as does straight shooting facts and concrete advice you can use to fight the Rail policy Wonks and elites who would like to give their kids a ride on a train.... once.

Examples: "Ten Congestion Busters", "Ten Myths of dealing with Traffic Congestion" and "Ten Steps to Congestion Relief". Granted they look like cold remedies, but are practical traffic congestion solutions.

Just these three provide you with talking points to take to the City council, the County Board (which I have already) and State and Federal transportation officials.

Locally, we are using "The Road More Traveled" as our Bible in talking to civic groups, on local radio and TV, Web sites and Blogs to wake people up to the boondoggle that this plan for a Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) actually will impose on everyone. "The Road" gives you practical solutions to offer to counter the "Rail Heads."

Two words of advice: "Buy it"